


Yours Is No Disgrace

by theputterer



Series: assorted nonsense timestamps [8]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Children of Characters, Depression, F/M, Family Issues, Future Fic, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Mental Health Issues, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 19:04:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17730869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theputterer/pseuds/theputterer
Summary: They cross the dark green grass. They carefully meander down the rugged hillside. They tread over the heavy black sand. They reach the beach, the gray waves lapping at the shore, a distant, blurry sun eyeing them overhead.The sea beckons. It breathes, with them.“I know what it’s like to hate my own father,” Jyn says.She half-expects Ersa to groan and turn away, stomp back up the hill to the white house. But Ersa surprises her; she tends to do that. She matches Jyn’s pace, step by step.[Or: melancholia, and what you are.]





	Yours Is No Disgrace

**Author's Note:**

> Story title from the song by Yes.
> 
> Chronologically, story takes place in between SAIL TO THE MOON and BINARY STAR. As with the rest of the Nonsense, I think you can get away without reading either of those.

_If the summer changed to winter, yours is no disgrace_

 

* * *

Rage; it is something Jyn knows very well.

For a while, it was the thing that kept her going. Abandoned by her parents, it was rage that she employed to ground herself, to inoculate herself against the other emotions the experience gave her, such as grief, and rejection. Rage was so much more preferable than those two. Among the diverse crew that made up Saw Gerrera’s Partisans, rage was the only universal language. It was the thing that unified them, the single aspect they all undeniably had in common. She was so young, so naive, so innocent; but she was angry. And that alone made her one of them.

Until, of course, she wasn’t.

But rage rescued her again. It propelled her. Dumped by Saw, left behind by her second so-called _family,_ it was rage that drove her to fend for herself, to steal and lie and fight for her own survival. She wasn’t even fully certain as to what she was actually angry at; there were so many suspects, each as likely as the next. She hadn’t even really wanted to investigate what she was angry at. She was certain that nothing good could come out of it, the worse being forgiveness at what was devastating her.

Because without her rage; what was she doing? Who was she?

Jyn knows she has grown past her rage. Maybe even grown out of it. She isn’t angry anymore. Not like she was, at least. Now she feels a healthy amount of anger, and only on occasion. She does not carry it on her shoulders. She does not feel it in her ribs.

It’s been a while since she felt that rage.

But she will always recognize it, even when it manifests in someone it has no business manifesting in.

Ersa is a caged animal in a house of stone.

Her rage is primal, but also surprisingly subtle. She exists in a coiled state at all times. Her jaw is clenched, her hands fisted.

But she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t yell.

She internalizes it.

Jyn fears the rage will crush her sixteen-year-old daughter.

It is the first time Cassian finds himself at a loss with what to do about Ersa.

“What can I say,” he whispers, only partly to Jyn, and mostly to himself. From the front room window, they watch Ersa kick at a frozen ball of snow in the street, waiting for the transport that will take her to school to arrive. Ersa is bundled up, dressed in black, sticking out almost aggressively from the swirling gray around her. But there is something about her that fits in, still.

It’s the gray, and how it does not only flicker around Ersa, but seep out of her.

The gray is in her blood, like it is in her father’s blood.

Jyn squeezes Cassian’s shoulder.

Ersa was always more Cassian’s than she was ever Jyn’s, like Fima was always more her son than Cassian’s son. It’s never been an issue, never something they spoke of with jealousy or regret; it’s just been something they’ve always known.

But even if they never discuss it; it does exist. And it can be damaging. Jyn and Fima are too alike; they are both stubborn, dramatic, short-tempered, and known to be cruel when they want to be. They have long been liable to have epic, devastating blowout fights, culminating in the one they had prior to Fima leaving to join the Resistance. But it had been during that fight, a fight that was really about grief and Jyn’s terror at losing her son to war, that she and Fima had come to an understanding of what it meant for Fima to be her son.

It meant her son was going to war. Of course.

Yet while Fima and Jyn were intimately familiar with the drawbacks of having similar personalities, Ersa and Cassian had not been tested in the same way. Until now.

Ersa’s rage is the manifestation of her melancholia. The genetic mental illness she inherited from her father, who inherited it from his mother. Inescapable, chronic, and life-long. A familial trauma that they had always known would come to pass.

Yet Cassian’s melancholia has never appeared so volcanically. His has always been understated: a murky sorrow, a restless insomnia, an inability to comprehend happiness in a way Jyn and Fima (and millions and billions of others) do. To see Ersa’s melancholia now--to see her pacing anxiety, her short fuse, her brutal and manic _rage--_ it is dizzying. It’s incomprehensible.

Jyn thinks they spent too much time preparing for Ersa to be Cassian’s daughter, that they forgot that Ersa was also _her_ daughter.

Maybe it should not be too surprising that Ersa’s melancholia should erupt as Jyn’s dormant rage.

Oddly, Jyn thinks of calling Fima.

But Fima is away, gone from Fest, running wildly towards war, this devastating thing that once called his parents’ names.

Jyn looks at Ersa, and knows Ersa hears the call, too.

She knows Ersa will leave. Less to chase after her beloved brother, and more to run away from the gray of Fest, the gray of her home, the gray of her father, the gray that has long lived under her skin. Ersa will not be running towards something. She will only be fighting to not stay still, to not let the gray consume her.

The idea that Ersa can leave without knowing her parents are with her, every step of the way, with her melancholia and her rage--Jyn cannot bear it.

Cassian is bewildered, lost and small in the face of Ersa’s rabidity.

It is a fire, the likes of which he has only been burned by. Turned to smoke, when the fire was his beloved older sister, who guided him into a rebellion that allowed him to mask the melancholia as shellshock and trauma. Reduced to shadow, when the fire was his first girlfriend, the love of his adolescence, who took on the grief and the horror of a Coruscant locked under Imperial rule, right at his side.

And then he was ash, gray and sedated, as Jyn’s wildfire reached him.

He came back from the ashes. He made something better out of all his gray.

But this is a fire he cannot contend with, as it was a fire he started. He’s the match, and the gasoline.

Ersa does not need more ammunition. She does not need someone to turn to dust.

She needs someone’s fire to hold her close, and linger with her in the pain and fear, which are always the two tenets of rage.

It is with this knowledge that Jyn approaches Ersa one morning, and calmly says, “Pack your bags.”

 

* * *

 

“Why is Papa not coming with us?”

“Because he has work.”

“He could take time off. You’re taking time away from the orphanage. You _never_ do that.”

“Yes, well. This is important.”

“What, kicking your tenants out?”

“Their lease expired, and they elected not to re-sign. I’m hardly _kicking them out,_ Ersa.”

“If we’re not kicking people out, then why am I coming?”

“I thought you’d want to come. You always liked the house, the sea, the fields, the hills--”

“I’ve got school.”

“You can’t expect me to buy that. Since when have you preferred school over skipping it?”

“Mama--”

“Do you want to come with me or not?”

“... Yeah. I do.”

 

* * *

 

The air is thick with salt, mist, and moss, and Jyn breathes it in with relish.

Lah’mu welcomes her home.

She tends to forget how much she misses it until she’s back on the planet, when she’s standing on the black sand and surveying the land before her. The fields are a dark green, leaves sparkling with the mist that settles on them to create a perpetual dew. Everything is damp, always, and the wind exacerbates the chill, settling Jyn easily. Once, she found the cold to be dizzying; but it’s practically sizzling after Fest, the humidity a welcome change.

The harsh sea breeze tosses her thin brown hair around her face, and she ties it back as best she can. She prefers to keep her increasingly lightening hair short, and so she only manages a stump of a knot at the nape of her neck.

Salt lands on her cheeks, a constellation of new freckles.

The Erso Family Homestead reaches back to her.

She walks across the field that had once been covered by her mother’s carefully planted crops. She runs her fingers over the tops of the tall grass.

Ersa trails her, a walking shadow.

Where Jyn is brown hair and pale skin, Ersa is black hair and brown skin. Ersa’s hair is longer, past her ribs, falling in waves of black curls inherited from Serafima, her grandmother. She’s wrestling with it now, scowling as the wind tosses it around her elbows.

But Jyn and Ersa are the same height, and Jyn recognizes something of her mouth in Ersa’s smirk, remembers the way she walks in Ersa’s stride.

Ersa is Cassian’s, and Serafima’s.

But she is Jyn’s too.

And something that is so much more.

 

* * *

 

Jyn had anticipated needing to corral and cajole Ersa into helping her clean the house, but Ersa is surprisingly helpful. She marches into the fresher with cleaning supplies and only a small grimace, and scrubs at the salt that lines the windows outside. She wipes down every countertop in the kitchen, and hacks at the foliage encroaching on the backpath of the house. She does not talk much, focusing on her work, and her thoughts.

Jyn watches her.

The silence strains.

“The new tenants move in next week,” Jyn says.

Ersa _hmms._

“They’re a mother and a daughter,” Jyn adds.

Ersa pauses. She glances at Jyn from the kitchen floor.

“Really,” she says, flatly.

“Really. The daughter is… Eleven, I think. And I was too polite to ask how old the mother is.”

Carefully, Ersa gets to her feet. She wipes her hands carelessly down the front of her baggy shirt, flexes her socked feet, and scowls. Ersa is all bony elbows and sharp cheekbones, thin knees and long fingers. She is sixteen years old, and living with a sadness that will never leave her.

“Why are we here, Mama?” Ersa asks.

When Jyn was sixteen years old, her family abandoned her.

Again.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Jyn says.

 

* * *

 

They cross the dark green grass. They carefully meander down the rugged hillside. They tread over the heavy black sand. They reach the beach, the gray waves lapping at the shore, a distant, blurry sun eyeing them overhead.

The sea beckons. It breathes, with them.

“I know what it’s like to hate my own father,” Jyn says.

She half-expects Ersa to groan and turn away, stomp back up the hill to the white house. But Ersa surprises her; she tends to do that. She matches Jyn’s pace, step by step.

“He left me,” Jyn says. “When I was nine. My mother and me. I kind of think it was easier, that he left her, too. It allowed me to push the burden on someone else. But then I would remember that him choosing to leave is what got my mother killed. So, really, I was the only one who was left behind. I had to live with the abandonment.”

Jyn has told Ersa this before, but in fewer sentences. Ersa knows Galen chose to work for the Empire, that Lyra died in front of him. Ersa knows Galen built the Death Star. She knows Galen died in Jyn’s arms.

“I’ve been angry with him for a long time,” Jyn continues. “But I found that anger was useful. I found that it kept me sharp, and strong. It distracted me from anything else I was feeling. Because I was really just sad, Ersa. And lonely.” She shrugs. “The anger let me avoid all of that.”

“I know why you’re telling me this,” Ersa mumbles.

“Do you?”

“You don’t want me to be angry at Papa.”

“No, I don’t,” Jyn confirms. “But more than anything, I want you to understand _why_ you’re angry.”

This gives Ersa pause. She glances at Jyn, big brown eyes in her thin face.

“It took us a long time to decide to have you,” Jyn says, and Ersa’s steps become softer, so as to listen more closely. This is not a story Ersa knows. “Fima was very much for it; he wanted a sibling, as everyone he knew had one, and loved them. I think growing up in the orphanage made him want one, too. Those kids were together all the time. He’d come home and it’d just be your father and me. Definitely a let down.”

Ersa huffs an approximation of a laugh. Jyn’s chest warms.

“And I was for it, too,” Jyn says. “I couldn’t wait to have you. I wanted you.” She hesitates, and adds, “But it wasn’t just my decision. And it took over a year for your father to say yes.”

“He didn’t want me.”

Ersa’s voice is even, barely shakes, but Jyn knows her.

“The opposite,” Jyn says. “He was _afraid._ Afraid you’d inherit the melancholia. He told me that he didn’t think he could do that to a child. That it was something very hard to live with, the sadness, and the paranoia, and the anxiety… It caused him a lot of grief. And he loved Fima so much, saw how happy Fima was, and he was so afraid that you would have the melancholia.”

“So why’d you decide to have me, then? Because he was right.”

Ersa’s voice has turned cutting. Her anger is returning, and she soaks in it. It is probably more bearable than her confusion.

“Because we wanted you so badly.”

Jyn stops on the beach, and Ersa stops with her. Ersa is framed in the gray light of the sun, the light forming a foggy halo around the crown of her head. Jyn reaches out, and puts a hand on Ersa’s warm cheek.

“You probably feel like we damned you,” she whispers, and Ersa turns her gaze down, an answer in the simple gesture. “You’re bitter. I understand.”

“Do you,” Ersa mumbles.

“If you and I have only one thing in common; it’s how we cannot stand how much we love our fathers.”

Ersa looks up.

“I love him,” Jyn says, and her voice breaks. “I love my father so much. And I have a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t. I can never forget how he abandoned me. How he did not go back for me. How he did not try to contact me. How he did not search for me, or keep tabs on me. Saw left me, too, and my father didn’t know. He assumed so much. Assumed I would stay with Saw. Assumed if I didn’t, that I was dead. Assumed Saw would never leave me, like he did. Assumed that if I was alive, I would be eager and ready to help him destroy his weapon of annihilation. He never even _asked.”_

 

* * *

 

Galen glows in the hologram. He has never been further away.

_“I try to think of you, only in the moments when I am strong, because the pain of not having you with me… your mother… our family. The pain of that loss is so overwhelming I risk failing even now. It’s just so hard not to think of you.”_

_What of my loss, Papa? What about_ my loss?

_I have nothing left._

 

* * *

 

“It sounds so silly, doesn’t it?” Jyn asks, and she smiles, but it is humorless. “Of course I had to destroy it. An awful, terrorizing machine. But my father… Kriff, he never told me he was _sorry._ I needed to hear that. I didn’t care about how he’d wasted time, or how bad he felt; I just needed that apology. I needed to hear him say that he loved me.”

_“Stardust.”_

Close. But not the same. Not the _words._

Not hearing the words stunted her. Cassian told her he loved her, and she went mute. He nearly died without hearing the words from her. She would never have forgiven herself from robbing him of that certainty.

“It would be so much easier if I didn’t love him,” Jyn says. “If I hated him that much. And I do hate him, believe me… But that’s _Papa._ That’s my father. And I can’t--I’ve tried, and I can’t _not_ love him. So instead I’m left with this anger. Because it doesn’t make sense. It is so confusing.”

Ersa bites her lip, and kicks at the sand under her boots.

“He’s trying so hard,” she mumbles. “I hate how I’m making him feel bad. But I just… It’s his melancholia, and he knew it, and--”

“Ersa,” Jyn whispers. “My best girl.”

“I’m so messed up, and it’s… It’s…”

_“We call it the Death Star. There is no better name.”_

“I almost died because of something created by my father,” Jyn says.

(In another universe, Jyn Erso watches the wall of light speeding towards her.)

“I know what it’s like to know you could lose yourself to something he did.”

(In another universe, she becomes stardust.)

“And I know how to live with it.”

 

* * *

 

In the front room, she braids Ersa’s hair. It takes time; Ersa’s hair is thick and wild, with a mind of its own.

“Ugh,” Ersa groans, wincing as Jyn accidentally tugs one of the tresses too hard. Jyn apologizes with a soft pat to Ersa’s scalp. “I wish I had your hair.”

Jyn snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous. Your hair is beautiful.”

“It’s messy.”

“Baby, you need your eyes checked if you think mine is _not.”_

Ersa picks at the carpet. “I think I’d rather have your hair.”

Jyn pauses.

Ersa isn’t finished.

“I think I’d rather be you.”

Jyn stills, still holding handfuls of black curls in her hands.

“Ersa,” she says.

“You named me after you,” Ersa says, some heat coming to her words, and Jyn feels the rage, red hot and rising, coming off her daughter, brushing her own face. “It seems unfair that I get all these… Stupid Andor genes.”

If Jyn was younger, and more careless, she’d delight over hearing _Stupid Andor genes._

Shara Bey had once declared Sernpidal eyes to have strong genes, to be unavoidable in the children of those who had them, and Cassian and Fima and Ersa were all living proof. Fima has Cassian’s height and lankiness. Ersa has even more: his eyes, his cheeks, his fingers. His mother’s hair.

“Your father named you after me because he loves me,” Jyn says.

The idea had been Fima’s originally. It was Cassian who thought of bastardizing her surname, to become _Ersa._

“And he wanted you to always have that reminder,” Jyn says. “Of how loved you are.”

Ersa nods, though there’s still defiance in her chin.

Jyn’s chin.

But not hers, not really.

“Do you know why I call you _my best girl,_ Ersa?” Jyn asks.

It was a term of endearment she’d bestowed on Ersa long ago. It usually came out as _“How’s my best girl doing today?”_ or _“That’s my best girl.”_ Ersa preened under it, usually. It was something that differentiated her from Cassian and Fima. It was something for her alone.

“Besides being my best girl,” Jyn says, and Ersa laughs, “It’s to remind you that you are always your _best._ You are everything you can be. You are so much more than your father’s melancholia, or your grandmother’s hair. You are plenty more than my height, or my smile. You’re _you._ With your rage, and your sorrow. That’s you. That’s my best girl.”

Ersa’s eyes are downcast, and there is something shining in them.

“I’m never going to be easy for you,” Ersa says. “I’m going to be… Mean, and rude, and cruel, and--”

“And we can handle it,” Jyn says, voice firm and hard. She can be firm and hard for this, and a little angry, at the thought that Ersa thinks her rage, her mental illness, might make her hard to love. “You’re valid, Ersa. All of it. All of you.”

Ersa blinks hard, shaking her head slightly.

“We will always want you,” Jyn murmurs. “It might have taken us a while to get there, but the second we wanted you; that was it. We always will. And we want all of you, everything you are. You are so much more than we ever could have imagined. So good, so beloved.”

“Mama,” Ersa tries.

“Ersa,” Jyn says. _“Ersa._ Remember that you have my name, but it’s been made by you. It’s unique to _you.”_ She swallows. “And I love you for all you are.”

Tears slide down Ersa’s face.

 

* * *

 

She carried her.

Jyn carried Ersa with her, in her. She took Ersa everywhere, kept her closer than anything else. She was the first to hold Ersa, then a shocked, quiet thing with a smattering of dark hair and big eyes.

Stars watched from the window.

“I’m your mother,” Jyn said.

Fima stared, amazement silencing him.

Cassian touched Ersa’s head, his fingers trembling, undone by so much.

“Hello, Ersa,” he whispered, and Ersa blinked.

“Ersa,” Fima managed.

“Ersa,” Jyn crooned.

_Ersa._

A word, a name. A synonym.

For what they all meant: _I love you._

 

* * *

 

In the dawn, the dew lights up the field of grass, turning it celestial.

Ersa stands in the middle, a supernova among a mass of constellations.

Jyn packs up their things. She does a last run-through her parents’ house, checking that the fresher has been turned on again, that the lights are all off save for the porch light, that the generator is gassed and ready. She takes her and Ersa’s bags to the ship, and does a last check for any of their personal items in the house.

The house is clean, and empty.

It is ready for its next inhabitants.

 

* * *

 

Ersa lingers in the field. Jyn joins her, and is unsurprised to see that Ersa has stopped by the grave of Lyra Erso, beside the stone marker for Galen Erso.

She takes Ersa’s hand.

“Hi Mama,” Jyn says. “Hi, Papa.”

Ersa nods. “Hello.”

She’s greeted them before, back when she was younger, and the white gravestone bearing Lyra’s name towered over her. Now, she stands tall over the grave. She stands taller than Lyra and Galen.

Jyn squeezes Ersa’s hand, and smiles down at the gravestones. “Look what I made, huh?”

Ersa scoffs.

“The best Erso by far,” Jyn continues. “The best of all of us.”

“I’m not the best Erso,” Ersa says.

“Oh, come--”

 _“You’re_ the best Erso, Mama.”

Jyn looks at her.

Ersa’s smile is soft, so soft.

She is a sixteen year old girl, who is trying her best.

Jyn loves her so much she cannot stand it.

“I’m something else entirely,” Ersa says.

“My best girl,” Jyn croaks, and Ersa grins, and drops her hand.

She runs through the grass, sending dew and moss into the air, messily braided black hair flying behind her like wings.

She runs, and runs, and Jyn follows.

 

* * *

 

Fest welcomes them home.

Cassian does, too.

He is nervous about it, waiting patiently as wife and daughter traipse through the front door. Ersa kicks her boots off carelessly, shrugging her snow-splattered coat to the floor. She pauses in the doorway, and peers up at Cassian, eyes slightly red from the cold, hair flattened by her wool hat.

And then she steps forward, and throws her arms around him.

Cassian freezes, unnerved by this display of affection after so much stress and heartache.

Behind Ersa, Jyn mimes a hug, and he gets the message. He wraps Ersa up tightly, clutching her to him.

Over her head, he stares at Jyn, and mouths, _What the hell did you do?_

 

* * *

 

Later, Jyn watches the snow fall outside their bedroom window, and Cassian watches her.

“I don’t talk about my father,” Jyn says, “Because it is just too hard to.”

“I know,” he murmurs.

“There’s a lot I haven’t… I don’t think I’ve forgiven him for. And that’s hard. I’m never going to get the answers I need. Or the apologies. And I just… I’m stuck. So I don’t talk about him.”

Cassian’s hand brushes her bangs out of her eyes. She turns her head, and looks at him.

Ersa’s brown eyes blink at her in the dark.

“You’re a good father,” she whispers.

A strained smile crosses his face. “I try to be.”

“And you _are._ They’re lucky, Fima and Ersa. And they know it. _Ersa_ knows it.”

Cassian sighs. Jyn knows him.

“She doesn’t show it, but she does,” she insists. “She’s just a little… Stuck.”

“Stuck,” Cassian repeats.

“In her head. You create a lot of emotions in her, and it’s hard for her to reconcile them. But you must know she loves you. She loves you so much she can’t deal with it.” Jyn shrugs. “You’re going to have to trust me on this. I know what I’m talking about.”

“I know.”

“But you’re a better father than Galen ever was. Because when Ersa is ready to talk, when she’s ready to forgive; you’ll be there for her. Right where you said you’d be. You won’t have left her. You never will.”

Cassian nods. “Yes.”

“Good. That’s good.”

She shuffles closer to him, pressing herself to his side. He kisses her head.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

 

* * *

 

_“Let’s have a girl this time,” he says, and Jyn laughs, loudly, and delightedly, and he smothers her laughter with a kiss._

 

* * *

 

“Thank _you,”_ Jyn whispers, so soft Cassian doesn’t hear her.

Outside, the snow clears up.

The dark endures.

But there, so far away and yet so brilliant: the stars wink.

 

**Author's Note:**

> My mother has a history of saying nasty shit to me, often occurring after I have exhibited symptoms of the mental illness I have lived with for over seven years. Even as I actively work on recovery, her words have given me a sense of shame, a question of my own emotional validity, and an urge to never discuss any of my issues, fears, and emotions with her.
> 
> And then this wonderful, wonderful book of essays by Esmé Weijun Wang, titled "The Collected Schizophrenias" was released this week. It included a particularly powerful essay titled "The Choice of Children", wherein she wrote about the struggle of choosing to become a mother as someone with chronic physical and mental illnesses. It's a fear I've long shared. It was an essay I needed to read. It was the first piece of writing on the topic that left me feeling better, not worse. The entire book is a treasure, but please: Read that essay.
> 
> Mental illness causes grief. Ersa is grieving the loss of her past self. Cassian is grieving that Ersa has inherited his melancholia. This story is just one step of many in their journey of understanding each other, and forgiving each other.
> 
> But Jyn is grieving that Ersa should feel lesser for it; crueler, meaner, angrier. Above all, Jyn needs Ersa to know that she is everything, and that is all she needs to be.
> 
> One thing I loved from THE LAST JEDI is the idea of being your own best thing. It's something I try to remember, and yet: I forget. The best thing you can give is you. All of you. It is enough.
> 
> You are wanted, anyway.
> 
> Please drop a line a line here, or on [tumblr](http://theputterer.tumblr.com).


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